Poetry Reading hosted by CMA Writer-in-Residence Ray McManus

CMA Writer-in-Residence Ray McManus welcomes Columbia Poet Laureate Jennifer Bartell Boykin and New Orleans poet M.A. Nicholson, winners of the 2024 Hilary Tham Capital Collection Prize by The Word Works, for a reading and reception. Books for sale by All Good Books.
 
Only Believe is Bartell’s second book of poetry in less than a year. In Only Believe, belief is hard, necessary, and constant work, as Bartell integrates the long aftermath of a childhood experience of sexual assault with what she knows about family, religion, and the place she calls home. Around the Gate is Nicholson's debut collection in which she opens up a telescopic view of New Orleans, past and present. 
 
Free. Gallery admission not included.
 
 
Jennifer Bartell (Boykin) is the Poet Laureate of the City of Columbia, SC. She received her MFA in poetry from the University of South Carolina and her debut collection, Traveling Mercy, appeared in 2023. An alumna of Agnes Scott College, she is an Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate Fellow and has received additional fellowships from Callaloo and The Watering Hole.
 
M.A. Nicholson is a New Orleans poet, editor, and educator whose writing appears in Best New Poets 2022, Tilted House Review, Peauxdunque Review, Trampoline Poetry, and elsewhere. An alumna of Loyola University with an M.F.A. from the University of New Orleans — where she served as associate poetry editor for Bayou Magazine — Nicholson was the recipient of the 2021 Andrea-Saunders Gereighty Academy of American Poets Award and is a cofounder of LMNL Arts.

Photo of Bartell by Lester Boykin.